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| From left - Bob Hughes, Allan Aldenhoven and John Walker. (Pic courtesy AWM) |
Today, gentle reader, is the fifty-fifth anniversary of B Coy, 7 RAR's encounter with a bunker system at grid reference 588698 near a feature which the operational maps called the "bone".
I remember it as if it were yesterday.
We had, as a company, a number of fleeting contacts leading up to the action which had indicated that VC were active in the area. It was the middle of the dry season, and access to water was an issue both for us, and whatever VC were around.
At the end of the encounter, all three platoons had taken casualties - 4 platoon one KIA (Bob Hughes), and one WIA (Karl Metcalf), 5 platoon one WIA (Colin Tilmouth), and 6 platoon (Graham Kavanagh) who died of dehydration on the 21st, the day before we hit the bunkers.
We had been inserted into the AO on the 19th April by patrolling all night along the dry creek bed of a stream called the Suoi Lho O Nho, led by Karl Metcalf, OC 4 platoon. Karl's navigation skills saw the whole company safely arrive in the AO. Most of us were exhausted at the end of the insertion, as we had stumbled for hours in the pitch dark along a rocky creek bed in close single file, fully laden with rations, water and ammunition, and immediately following a period of R & C at Vung Tau, when we'd drunk plenty of beer and other local concoctions.
A number of men in my (5) platoon had collapsed by the time we arrived, and apparently the same was happening to other callsigns and Graham Kavanagh (6 platoon) had collapsed and became progressively weaker as time passed. I remember seeing a group of soldiers clustered around him as we passed through their position. He died of severe dehydration just before a medivac chopper turned up.
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| Graham Kavanagh's medical report. (Note misspelling). |
Doug Gibbons (OC 5 platoon) had taken a half platoon squad out mid-morning on the 22nd to patrol along a dry creek, and it was a sentry from the bunker system that opened up on that patrol. Colin Tilmouth was wounded and choppered out, after Doug Gibbons retrieved him.
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| Colin (Charlie) Tilmouth |
4 platoon, led by Karl Metcalf, assaulted the bunkers, and the VC used RPGs to repel them. It was shrapnel from an RPG round fired into a tree that killed Bob Hughes. I was part of a half platoon group that remained as a blocking force on the banks of the dry gully whilst all this was going on. Looking back on it, it was only dumb luck that spared me, and others from my section, from participating in the assault.
After an afternoon when artillery, a light fire team (Bushranger gunships), and USAF F-100s joined in to attack the bunkers, tanks were summoned. It took them the best part of the evening to turn up, and by then it was too dark to move on the bunkers. Apparently, the combination of tanks, infantry and darkness would not have been conducive to a successful assault.
Next morning the tanks moved in and destroyed the bunkers, but the VC had (wisely) decamped.
This was our first serious contact as a company, and the second time we had been under fire. The first time was when 4 platoon opened up on us on 13th March in a friendly fire incident when Paul Lusk was wounded. I was patrolling next to him at the time, and the incident remains firmly implanted on my memory. Being on the receiving end of a volley of M60 concentrates the mind.
So today, I remember Bob Hughes, Graham Kavanagh and Colin Tilmouth (who was repatriated to Australia, and died in 1990).
May they rest in peace, and their memory be honoured.
Sed pro gratia dei.....
